


The Vagabond

by Brennah_K



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Canon character deaths, Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Abuse, OMC - Freeform, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:04:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brennah_K/pseuds/Brennah_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another one of those Tony and Gibbs meet as a result of Tony's involvement in the attack on Gibbs family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tony eyed the pigeons guiltily as he pulled a small hunk of the remaining muffin from his pocket and ate it as quickly and surreptitiously as he could. The pigeons really weren't the worst problem with letting anyone see that he had food, but it was less scary to pretend they were. Just like it was less scary to pretend that he was trying to sneak into his small hideout in the bushes without them seeing... and less scary meant he could think clearer and even run faster if he needed to without spending every single tiny second of the day on edge. As it was, it was hard enough to settle down at night and stop listening to the rustling sounds, screeching, and other night noises to sleep... still, it was better than going back.

Tony was convinced of that. If he went back, his father would just send him to the boarding school that he'd been planning to condemn Tony to after yelling at Tony that he was through with him... and was washing his hands of Tony. At first, Tony hadn't believed it, thinking his father was just drunk, again, and angry, but then barely two days after they'd returned from Maui, his father had the maid pack a week's worth of his clothes into an overnight case - then burnt the rest while Tony watched tearfully as his favorite clothing and what few keepsakes he had from his mother disintegrated into ash before he ordered the maid to take him and the case to the driver waiting in the driveway.

"Hey. Are you going to feed 'em?" A high cheerful voice broke Tony free from his unhappy memories and he glanced down to see two little girls, one sandy blond haired and one light blonde, looking back and forth between him and the birds. He glanced down at the muffin chunk uncertainly; there really wasn't much left, and he usually changed locations when he ran out of food and had to go looking again, so no one who might have noticed where he'd been hiding would see him bringing food back. Why give them one more reason to ...

"Well are ya?" The sandy blonde persisted, and Tony couldn't help but smile as he held out the bit of muffin to her.The kid was kind of funny, and anyway he still had a quarter of it in his pocket.

"You can if you want." He offered, when she eyed his hand with a dubious glare.

"My mother and father say that I can't take things from strangers!" she answered with a glare.

"Ooookay," Tony drawled with a sting of dry amusement. It wasn't something that his parents had ever told him, but it sounded like something he may have heard on tv, and was probably a pretty good idea."And I'm a stranger?"

"Well, DUH!" she retorted, looking at Tony as if he were a few cards short of a deck.

"Kelly..." Her blond friend pulled on her arm warningly, whispering loudly, "Don't get so close; Mom talks about people like him."

"What do you mean like him?" The sandy haired girl questioned impatiently, scanning Tony up and down with an appraising gaze as if whatever people 'like him' were, it would be apparent to the eye.

"He's homeless!" the other girl stage whispered, and Tony winced in response.

He knew that his clothes were starting to get dirty, despite washing them in the park's fountain a couple of nights ago, but he didn't think they had gotten that bad.

The sandy-haired girl, Kelly, snorted as she looked back at her friend and answered slowly as if to a less intelligent first grader, which as far as he knew they could have been. He didn't think so, but really, between being tutored and moving around the country with his father's business deals, he really hadn't seen too many girls - so didn't know how much bigger or smaller they were than boys usually, and it was hard to tell from tv commercials.

"Mattie, of course he's not. He's a kid like us! If he were homeless, they'd give him a home. That's what orfaniges are for. Dad said so."

Tony watched her bemusedly, the sting of there topic fading in the face of her certainty. She was completely wrong, of course, but somehow he doubted that any one who didn't know any better wouldn't be convinced by her stance, tone, frankness, and reference to authority. Whoever her father was, it was clear that -in her eyes- his word was the definitive end of any reasonable conversation.

Turning back to him, Kelly gestured between his muffin and the now alert pigeons, who seemed to recognize an impending feeding. 

Apparently, her father hadn't said anything about pigeons accepting anything from strangers, which Tony decided was a bit of a clever way to get around her parents' rules. Nodding to his little defender, Tony turned to the oncoming hoard of pigeons, broke the muffin bit into little crumbs, and tossed them out in a spray to the pigeons, who were quickly dissatisfied as the their promise of lunch quickly disappeared.

Kelly smiled brightly at him as she surveyed the cluster of birds, clearly believing her good deed for the day was completed, and despite himself, Tony pulled the other quarter out of his pocket, breaking it in half and tossing it her way. Not too many people smiled at him anymore, and it was worth the other bit of muffin to see her smile again. It's not like it would have lasted him the night anyways. 

Seeming to decide that the act of feeding a pigeon was a gateway to the non-stranger universe, Kelly smiled as she picked up her half of the muffin and began to break it up into tiny, tiny bits like he had the first time. Her friend, Mattie, though wasn't nearly as pleased with his gesture, at all.

"See, I told you!" Mattie declared, pointing at the disintegrating muffin still in his hand, "He is homeless; he's got food in his pockets - UNWRAPPED. Who does that?!? Bums, That's who!"

Kelly turned back to him a little more uncertainly now, studying the broken muffin that he was quickly trying to discard.

After a moment, she questioned, "Are you?" quietly, as if doubting her father's declaration about orphanages was unthinkable... her charming certainty shaken more than Tony could stand.

It didn't matter that the other girl was right. Her being right wouldn't change anything, but Kelly's smile and certainty had changed things, at least for a few minutes, letting him feel like just another kid feeding the birds, and he wanted to keep it that way as long as he could.

"Nope!" He lied with a cheerful pop of his lips, "I'm a vagabond, a drifter, on an adventure..." he deflected, trailing off when her eyes dimmed with disappointment. "And I'm running late for the train. I've enjoyed feeding the hungry flocks, with you, but I really must run."

And... he had to, if he wanted to keep even a few moments of their little bit of conversation pleasant, he had to leave before she openly called him a liar. Darting into the brush, he heard the other girl tell Kelly that she should tell her mother, and decided that it was definitely time for him to move.

  
ブレンキン

A rusted brown dumpster behind the french bakery was his next home for all of two weeks before a grumbling clerk noticed his presence when he came out to dump the day's lot of unsold pastries. He gave Tony a small trashbag of the pastries and a single-serving bottle of milk, but warned him that if the man's boss found Tony there, he'd call the police.

Tony's next few homes were unmemorable and quickly evacuated when Tony couldn't relax enough to sleep. He was smart enough to know that he'd need sleep to keep sharp, and he wasn't getting any where he'd been, even with the bag of pastries as a pillow. The alley beside the library seemed safe enough for a while, but after the third night, he realized he was only narrowly escaping being found by the police, who passed by the alley's mouth on a regular basis.

Finally, he'd found a mostly boarded up coal chute near a pretty run down hotel, and he counted himself lucky that the angle wasn't too sharp for him sit just inside the opening, and he could even lay down as long as he was careful not to get to close to where the boards had been broken through. It was enough to keep him out of the wind, and there weren't any other dumpsters or cubbies down the alley, so no one else seemed interested in it.  He'd given up trying to keep his clothes clean, because - hey, he might be as stupid as his father said, but he wasn't blind on top of it - coal chutes were the definition of dirty, and there wasn't a chance to keep clean as long as he was staying there, but at least he had food, shelter, and a quiet place to rest at night.

  
ブレンキン

"Kelly... Hurry up, Dear." A woman's voice urgent voice woke Tony. "Hurry up, now, we have to go!"

"Ms. Gibbs, please, don't yell. If you'll get in the car, Ma'am, Agent Bradenton will bring your daughter." A man cut her off, and despite Tony's better sense, he scooted out of the chute and moved down the mouth of the alley to watch.

The woman, a beautiful red-head was waiting beside an open door to a large, shiny, black suburban that just had to be a CIA car or something because it just looked... well... like a CIA or SWAT or Secret Service kind of vehicle. She was watching the doors to the hotel intently, waiting for her daughter, who appeared just a moment later, carried through the door by a man dressed in black, and Tony gasped in surprise. It was Kelly, the little pigeon girl from the park. The man ... probably some type of government agent... practically threw her into the car through the door and pushed her mom in after her, roughly enough that Tony called out, "Hey" in protest. He didn't know what was going on, but it didn't seem right for the man to treat the Kelly and her mom that way.

The man, Bradenton, Tony thought the other man had called him, grimaced, slammed the door, and started to stalk his way, when the car pulled away from the curb and a loud noise cut through the air just a moment before a shatter of glass. Looking beyond the man, Tony watched as the suburban swerved wildly, right into the path of another car, moving just a little too fast to be avoided by the other car that was also going a little too fast for the kind of street they were on.

Instead of going to help Kelly and her mom, though, the man glanced at Tony, then at the panicked driver who'd gotten out of the other wrecked car to check on the suburban's driver and passengers, then to other nearby buildings where people were starting to come out, and turned running to another car. The driver of the other wrecked car frantically tried to pull the suburban's doors open, shouting for help, but when that failed - turned and ran to the nearest building, probably to call the police.

Without thinking, Tony ran over and tried to keep pulling on the doors until someone could get there, and get them out, but why he'd thought he could open it when an adult couldn't he had no idea. From inside the car, though, he heard Kelly sobbing and couldn't stop trying to get in. Finally, he realized that he might be able to get through the shattered window, and started beating on it with his elbow until the hole in the glass had separated enough that he might get through. It was a hard wiggle to get through, and he felt the glass cut through his clothes and into his sides and arms as he did, but Tony did get through.

What he found inside, though, almost made him wish he hadn't. In the front seat, there was another man with a bloody hole in the front of his head and a much bigger hole in the side of it. Kelly's mom was twisted in her seat in a way that didn't look right at all. She didn't seem to be breathing, and dark blood bubbled out from a hole in her side that looked too big to be natural. Behind her, and thrown to the floor, Kelly seemed to be trapped between her mother's body and the seats, and Tony wasn't certain how or if he could or should move her- even though keeping her where she was seemed like the worst possible option.

  
ブレンキン

Trying to ignore the gore getting on his hands as he climbed over the man's body to get into the back seat with them, Tony carefully avoided any part of the seat that looked like it could even remotely put weight on Kelly, and realizing that she hadn't even noticed that he was there, called to her softly, "Kelly, hey Kelly, can you look at me?"

Sniffling, the girl didn't seem to hear him at first, but after a couple of repetitions, finally looked up, causing Tony to gasp. Her face really looked bad, with a blue-red swelling just below her temple and a stream of blood trickling from her nose as she blinked at him blearily. Her eyes didn't look good either, like she couldn't focus on him even though she was looking straight at him.

"Daddy?" She whimpered softly, causing Tony to wince. This was bad. This had to be bad.

"No, Kelly, it's...uh... Vagabond, remember me? From the park? We fed the pigeons together? Remember?"

"I want my daddy." She began to sob softly.

"I'm sorry, Kelly. I'm sorry he's not here for you; I'll do what I can, though. Can you help me? Can you see if you can move, Kelly, can you try that for me?"

Kelly wasn't listening, though, instead she was looking around blearily and whimpering with pain or fright.

"Where's my mommy?" She asked, and Tony gulped down his anxiety and fear as he glanced up at the unmoving woman. He couldn't decide whether it was better that she either couldn't see her mom, whom he was pretty sure had died, because of how it would make her feel, or worse because it meant that there had to be something pretty badly wrong with her. 

"I think she's talking with my mom," he hedged, hoping that she wouldn't ask where his mom was, "She'd be here if she could, I'm sure, but someone's run to get help, and they should be here soon. Do you think you can try to move for me, so we can get you out, and they can help you sooner?"

She cocked her head, looking at him blearily, but then nodded and tried to edge backwards. When she did though, she screamed with pain. 

"What is it?" Tony cried in alarm, but she'd sunken back into inarticulate whimpers. 

Deciding that he had to take the chance to check for himself, Tony carefully scooted into the hollow of the floorboard that she wasn't taking up and crouched down as low as he could to see that her foot had been forced beneath the front seat and looked as if it was almost being crushed by the pinched and bent metal bars beneath that he thought had probably been twisted by the other car's impact. 

"Oh God!" he gasped to himself, then hoping she hadn't heard him, sat back and gently ran his hand up and down her arm, like he was petting a puppy, hoping it could help make her feel even a little better. 

"Hurts!" she whimpered over and over, making Tony feel more and more horrible with each repetition because he'd asked her to move. 

"I'm sorry, Kelly. I'm sorry." He said over and over each time, continuously rubbing her arm until her whimpers and sniffles finally slowed. 

"I want my mommy and daddy," she cried brokenheartedly, and Tony felt tears of helplessness run down his cheeks at her request, making it too hard to see when he looked around whether anyone had come to help or not. 

He wanted to help her so much but didn't have any idea what he could do, or what adults would do to help her while they tried to get her out; he'd never understood how adults thought, and his father had never thought that he was ever worth explaining something to when he asked. Not like Kelly's father had seemed to, about orphanages, even though she'd gotten the wrong idea, at least it was clear that he'd tried. That thought brought another thought to Tony, then.

He didn't have any idea, but maybe Kelly did; maybe her father or mother had explained to her what to do to make her feel better, or shown her. It was worth a shot. 

"Hey Kelly, is there anything that I can do? That maybe your mom and dad do to make you feel better? While we wait for help to get here... Kelly..." Tony urged softly when she didn't seem to be listening, "What do your dad and mom do to make you feel better?"

"Daddy sings to me, 's a secr't, d'sn't let ... but me n mom--my hear." She finally answered in a soft slurry voice after he prompted again. 

"Okay, I can sing, if you'd like me to." he offered, but she didn't answer him. Not wanting to make her talk more when she seemed out of it, and he knew she was hurting, Tony softly started on the first song that came to mind. 

Dormi, dormi, bel bambino...

Vago figlio del mio cor...

La tua madre sta vicino...

Tutta gioia tutt' amor.

He didn't know for sure whether it was helping or not, but she leaned into him, so he thought it might be. Without asking her, though, maybe afraid of her answer, he moved on to the next song he could remember, holding her as gently as he could and brushing his fingers through her hair the way he thought he might like. 

Nella cantina di un palazzone  
tutti i gattini senza padrone  
organizzarono una riunione  
per precisare la situazione.

Quarantaquattro gatti,  
in fila per sei col resto di due,  
si unirono compatti,  
in fila per sei col resto di due,  
coi baffi allineati,  
in fila per sei col resto di due,  
le code attorcigliate,  
in fila per sei col resto di due.....

  
ブレンキン

Tony was wrapped in a grey brown blanket by the time another man in a black suit arrived on scene. He could feel the man looking at him after scowling at something the man in the short sleeved white shirt said, shaking his head with a deep sad look that Tony didn't want to think about. 

The new man's gaze turned to settle on Tony, but he couldn't seem to make himself care about what the new man and the other people were saying, even when the man in the white shirt pointed to him and gestured in the direction the ambulances had gone. 

Finally, after they seemed to argue about something gesturing back and forth to other people who'd been hanging around, but didn't seem to be firemen or ambulance workers, the man came over to him and sat down on the curb beside him. 

"Hey kid, they told me you were pretty brave, back there..." 

Tony shrugged in response, not feeling brave. 

"Name's Franks and yours?"

Tony stared at him trying to make sense of the man's words, but the man didn't seem patient enough for him to figure it out on his own, and explained, "I asked if you had a name, kid." 

It seemed like an odd question, but Tony nodded; didn't everyone have a name?

"And?" 

Tony shrugged, staring at the big black suburban that they were still cutting up, even though everyone who'd been inside had been taken away in ambulances. 

"Fair enough, let's see if you can answer this one, then, some of the folk over there think you might have seen the man who did this. That true?" 

Tony thought about it for a couple of seconds, it was both right and wrong, but he really didn't know how to explain it, so answered with the only thought that came to mind, "Bradenton".

"Well shi-iT! That damn coc-... Shit. Where're your Ma' n' Pa kid, I need to talk to 'em."

Tony shrugged again. His mom had died ... he paused to count it staring down at his fingers as he counted backward... He wasn't certain how long it had been since he'd run away but he thought it had been at almost a year since he'd run away from the driver who was supposed to put him on the plane to the boarding school... 

It had been close to Christmas, and the school was closing for the holidays, but his father had made arrangements for him to stay over at another 'school', until they reopened... he had hidden around the hotel they'd stayed in most of that winter slipping into the maintenance closets in the garage at night then moving to the park after... later that year... and it was starting to get cold again like it had been during the nights at the hotel ...

Then there'd been the year before his father took him to Hawaii... 

And the year before that when Tony had stayed locked in his suite while his father was at work until one of the maintenance men complained to the apartment manager and his father hired a new maid... 

And the year before that when he'd been taken care of by his mother's maid before his father had fired her...

So maybe four... anyway... since his mom ... his mom wasn't here any more and he didn't really know where his father was either; even when he'd still wanted Tony, he was always away on business deals. 

"Okay, kid, we'll talk about this later." The man grumbled when the man in the white shirt came up beside him, looking at Tony with an expression that Tony couldn't understand. 

"Okay, you can have him. Don't think we'll be able to get much out of him right now, anyway. But you have my number and call me if anyone tries to get in to see him. I'm sending a couple of my guys to guard his door. You hang about until they get there. Not in his room, but just around."

"Sir, I can't my supervisor..."  


"Don't give a damn what he's gonna say. That kid's a material witness and under my protection. Seein as I can't leave the scene right now, and you're swearing that he needs to be checked out by a doc, that leaves you. I'm telling 'em to look for you. If they don't put you on the phone with me first thing, you don't say a word about ever seeing the kid. Far as you know, he slunk off down an alley when the cops got here. Anyone else shows up, you call me direct and get the kid out of there quick as possible. Got me?"

"Sir, I..."

"It's a yes or no question, boy?"

"Yes, Sir." The man in the white shirt sighed and knelt in front of Tony, reaching up to brush the hair out of Tony's eyes. 

He was too close though, and Tony jerked back for a second. The man sighed heavily, and commented in a gentle tone, "Hey, it's okay, kid. We just need to take you to the hospital, okay? Just to get you checked out?"

The man's eyes seemed clear and not particularly angry, so Tony shrugged and nodded, taking the man's hand when it was held out.  



	2. Chapter 2

Mike Franks returned the phone to its cradle with a grim smile. He'd known that Gibbs would take the scum bag out. Shame he hadn't had as much luck cleaning his own house.

Halfway across the bullpen, Bradenton ended a phone call of his own, and casually scanned the room, probably to see if any one had noticed him getting the call likely telling him his boss had died in a tragic one car accident in the mexican desert. Bradenton's eyes paused when their gazes met, and Mike could read the question there.

"if you ain't got enough work to do, boy, I can call archives n' get a carton or two of cold cases up here. "

"No, Sir, I do," Bradenton answered.

"Thought ya might. You found out how that sack of shit got wind which safe house those girls were at?"

"No, Sir." Bradenton lied smoothly.  The boy might have been a decent poker player if it weren't for that damn twitchy eyebrow of his.  

"Then I don't wanna see your nose outta them files... And Bradenton..."

"Yes, Sir?"

"You tell that girlfriend of yours to keep her calls for after work, less you want to be outta work."

"Yes, Sir," the bastard answered with a fake sheepish grin, visibly relaxing.

Disgust rose up in Mike's throat, and he felt a distinct urge to spit in the bastard's face, but it was always easier to catch someone who thought he was getting away with something, so he let the urge pass. As it was, the slime had already made a number of mistakes (showing up at the hospital when he should have been at the scene, checking out all of the safe houses after hours - with no good reason, and even showing up at Mike's house one evening to find Mike sitting down to eat, alone and his frustrated expression was enough of a tell to raise Mike's hackles even if he hadn't already been suspicious). Nothing solid, yet, but riling him up and making him watch his back when he was already nervous about the boy's whereabouts wouldn't help Mike get his job done any sooner. 

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His thoughts straying to the boy again, Mike let himself scratch out scribbled notes as he worked out his next moves.  


Only a handful of people, himself, the director, and the agent assigned to guard the boy, knew that the boy had named Bradenton as being an agent on scene when the man was assigned to a different case entirely and had been supposedly engaged on another investigation when the unplanned move turned into an ambush. Mike, himself, was the only one currently investigating the agent, surreptitiously tracking the agent when he could do so without being discovered, running his bank and phone records, and trying to build a case on what little the boy had said. And there was little enough of that as it was. 

The boy, from all reports, was practically a mute, as it was, barely answering the questions put to him with more than a nod and an almost vacant gaze, clamming up when they got anywhere near discussing the ambush. The doctor's claimed it was some sort of an 'acute stress reaction with disassociative symptoms..." and some other mularky that amounted to the kid being a head case right now and too young anyway to be any sort of decent witness in court. 

He was sure the kid had more in him, given the reports on what he'd done at the scene, and judging from the doc's initial reports, a damn sight more had happened to him than just running afoul of the ambush, but - in Mike's opinion - it was going to take a serious effort to break it out of him, and he didn't have the time to spend when he needed to be building a strong enough case against Bradenton to get him out of the NIS, kid's testimony or no. 

Unfortunately, he'd trained Bradenton, himself, and aside from being stinkin turncoat, the man was a good agent, cautious and smart about what could be traced back to him, how the NIS worked, and -unfortunately- how to hide from it. 

What he needed was an outside player, someone that Bradenton wouldn't know to watch out for, someone who could track the bastard without drawing his attention as he was beginning to think that Bradenton suspected of him, someone who didn't use NIS techniques, someone who didn't play by NIS rules...

His scribbles filled the scrap of paper all the way down to where he'd scratched the number for his Mexican contact, and he was about to start scratching more thoughts below the number, when his eyes froze on it, and his grim smile returned...

Someone from the outside... who could track the bastard to ground...

Grabbing his phone again, he hurriedly dialed the number.

"Yeah, yeah, I know who ya are... Listen, do ya still have him under surveillance? Yeah? Good. I want you to get a message to him. Don't care how, just get him my number, and tell him I'll expect a call from him round ten o'clock tonight. That's not my problem. Just get him the message. Yeah, it's important, wouldn't have called ya if it weren't."  



	3. Chapter 3

Leroy Jethro Gibbs slammed his car door, anger, impatience, and frustration surging to the surface as he finally reached his destination. Gibbs had been grinding his teeth since crossing the Virginia state line, biting back the comments and curses he'd been holding in reserve for Agent Franks since the sob had hung up on him three nights earlier.

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He'd been having one last drink, in grim celebration of a completed mission, ready and prepared to go down to the beach and join his girls... when a waitress laid a scrap of paper by his hand with a number scrawled on it. He'd almost thrown it away, thinking it was a weak attempt at flirtation... until he recognized the Washington area code.

Below the number was another scribble: "22:00 tonight".

It didn't fit into his plans, but the longer he stared at it, the more intrigued he became. 

He'd spoken to a handful of people since coming back, on compassionate leave, but who would have the resources to reach him in a Mexican cantina. Agent Franks was the only one he could think of who might know he'd headed down here and why, but Gibbs had no idea what the Agent could want from him...

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The door opened at Gibbs' first knock... opened unexpectedly by a slim, dark-skinned man, who stared appraisingly at Gibbs, before reaching out with a gesture for Gibbs to give him something.

"Your ID." The man demanded mildly.

Gibbs dug it out and handed it to the man. Franks hadn't told him much, but there had been mention of a material witness, under their protection, who might be persuaded to give Gibbs more information, if he knew of Gibbs connection to his girls.

The man studied his ID for several seconds before handing it back and offering his hand.

"Special Agent Leon Vance," He introduced himself.

"Gunnery Sergeant J. Gibbs." Gibbs replied in kind, glancing past him into the room behind, which appeared to be a well-appointed, lived-on sitting room.

Stepping away from the door, Vance gestured for him to enter, but stopped him a second later with a hand in the center of his chest.

"Before I let you speak to him, I want you to understand something: in my opinion, Franks is making a mistake with you - going outside agency protocol, to bring in an untrained ... well you're not quite a civilian are you? But, you're not a federal agent, either."

"If you're not on board with this," Gibbs replied gruffly, looking over the agent's shoulder to confirm his suspicion before continuing, "I'm surprised that you're letting Franks use your house instead of a safe house or hotel."

"The only reason - and I mean the ONLY reason - that I'm cooperating with this is that we can't get the boy the help he needs until Bradenton's out of the picture."

"Your witness has a son?" Gibbs asked, a sinking feeling in his stomach beginning to make itself known.

Vance pushed the door shut with an exasperated growl, "Why. Am. I. Even. Surprised?"

Turning back to Gibbs, he looked toward another room, then shook his head and gestured the opposite way down the hall, "Okay, change of plans. Come with me."

At the end of the hall, he gestured Gibbs ahead of him into a den, then behind the desk, explaining, "It will be easier if you sit on that side. You will have more room to spread his files out."

"What didn't he tell me?" Gibbs asked impatiently, irritated at being sent into a situation he knew so little about.

"No shortcuts, here, Gunnery Sergeant. After you read our witness's files, I'll answer any questions you have left. Then I'll let you speak to him, understand? That is the ONLY way this is going to happen."

Easily reading the agent's determination, Gibbs sat behind the desk and took the file, surprised by the fact that it was close to two inches thick.


	4. Chapter 4

“Well, Shit!” Gibbs growled, slapping the manilla folder shut as he finished reading the last witness report.

“Eloquent, effectively describes the situation, but hardly appropriate for mixed company and children.” Agent Vance riposted from the doorway, apparently having anticipated down to the minute how long it would take for Gibbs to review the doctors' and witness' reports in the file. 

“What the … heck was Franks plannin' for me to do with the kid? Interrogate him?” 

What a cluster fuck!

From all reports, the kid hadn't just seen the agent who'd betrayed Shannon and Kelly's location, but fought his way into the car, getting some serious cuts and injuries, and had stayed with his girls in their last moments, reportedly comforting and singing to Kelly well after her last breath and refusing to leave his little girl until the fire fighters had cut them out of the car. He'd suffered from some kind of shock after that, and the doctors had been forced to sedate him to complete the physical exam, though the ER specialist and on-call pediatrician both seemed to agree that the kid's panic attack was equally indicative of having suffered previous physical or sexual abuse, or both. And, as if the situation needed anything to make it worse, the kid seemed to be suffering some form of PTSD, not even speaking to answer anything more than yes or no questions. 

How was he supposed to deal with this? 

“I can't usually speculate on what the old man is thinking, but that's a likely probability. Unless I'm mistaken, I'd guess that he probably just told you what he thought it would take to get you 'riled-up' enough to get you here to talk to the child and patently didn't give a damn about how you got the answers for him, as long as you got the answers.”

Gibbs nodded his agreement, not terribly impressed with the man's obvious deductions. 

“The old man's favorite phrase is 'not my problem, just get it done'!” Vance continued as Gibbs dropped his face into his hands with a frustrated sigh. 

“Yeah, well, THAT's not My problem. With what I owe that kid, there's no way I'm running rough-shod over him.”

“What you owe him?” Vance cocked his head, a confused expression crossing his face. 

“That child was there caring for MY girls when I wasn't; nothing he could do to save 'em, but he was tryin'... was with 'em in their last moments, taking care of Kells...” Gibbs trailed off, pushing his hands together to keep Vance from seeing how hard he was fighting to keep his emotions from spilling over. There was no way in hell he could brow beat the boy after all the child had been through and had done. 

“I see.” Vance said slowly, before taking the file off the desk, dropping it back into a file drawer, and locking the drawer. “Well, Jackie's almost finished with dinner. Join us.”

“I don't know if that's a good idea.” Gibbs hedged, torn between wanting to meet the boy and wanting to avoid anything that could make matters worse. 

“To be truthful, I'm not sure either,” Vance offered in agreement, “but as much as it infuriates me to admit this, the old bastard's right about one thing. Tony won't be safe until Bradenton and anyone else he was working with are brought to justice, and Franks wouldn't have done anything as reckless as calling in an untrained outsider in if he'd found any solid evidence linking Bradenton to the ambush. Something needs to give, and I'm afraid it might be Tony.”

“That doesn't mean that....”

“Look Gunnery Sergeant, Jackie and I have tried, but well... it's taken closed to a month to get him to trust us enough just to write his first name down... and I do mean 'just' his first name. When we asked him for his last name, the child gave us the thousand yard stare and just stood there until we sent him back to watch television.”

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“Tony,” Mrs. Vance called softly, and Tony glanced up from the tv.

“Wash up for dinner, please, and join us at the table.” 

Tony nodded and turned off the tv, reluctantly. He'd been watching a Mike Hammer marathon and knew there'd be another show after dinner, but would miss the distraction in the mean time. 

The Vance's guest washroom, off the living room, was small but attractively decorated, Tony thought, with teal tiles from the floor to a trim just at the top of the bath. Above it was a thin banner of wall paper, running the circumference of the room, dappled with conchs, starfish, and sand dollars. 

Mrs. Vance had stocked a clamshell soap-dish with small matching decorative soaps that reminded Tony of the hotel in Hawaii. Frankly, Tony hated the little soaps because of the reminder, and tried not to look at them as he grabbed one up, rubbing it forcefully between his palms to erase as much of the design as he could while the water ran over it. 

Humming under his breath, Tony squeezed the foam back and forth between his fingers, careful to coat and rinse his hands repeatedly. So far, the Vances hadn't yelled at him, yet, but he could feel that they were waiting for something... that they expected something from him, but they wouldn't tell him what they wanted, and it was making him edgy. 

As much as he'd always disappointed his father, at least his father would tell Tony what he wanted. It didn't keep him from getting angry when Tony failed at doing what he'd asked, but at least Tony knew what was wanted. Other than telling him that he couldn't go outside and too often asking him if he wanted something else or more (which he'd always answered “No, Ma'am” or “No, Sir” to, well-remembering how angry his father would get when he thought Tony was ungrateful for what he had)... the Vances never told him what they wanted, even though he could tell, from the ever-present disappointment that seemed to be in their gazes, that he he wasn't doing what they'd wanted. It was almost enough to make him want to scream, as stupid as that would have been. 

Tony knew he might not be too smart, but he'd learned the cardinal rules and the past year had taught him how bad it could get when he broke one of the rules. He couldn't go back and fix things now, but he could do his best to sure that he never broke another one. 

“Tony, come to the table. There's someone I want you to meet.” Mr. Vance's hands closed on his shoulders as his voice finally got through to Tony, who glanced down to see that he'd almost washed the little soap away. 

When he looked back up, Mr. Vance was staring at him in the mirror, with that always-there sad, disappointed gaze. 

“Yes, Sir.” Tony answered, rinsing his hands off again, and trying not to let it remind him of the hotel in Hawaii. His father had said almost the same thing to Tony before he'd introduced Tony to Mr. Neerguard.

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“Mr. Gibbs, this is Tony. Tony, this is Mr. Gibbs.”

Gibbs watched as Tony's eyes traveled up from his boots, grimacing as he wondered how the child would interpret his camo. After Frank's manipulative and misleading phone call, whether intentional or not on Frank's part, Gibbs had changed back into the camo he'd worn on his hunt in Mexico, for the sheer, if unspoken, intimidation factor of the BDU's. He'd shamelessly intended to bully the witness to his family's murder into cooperation through any means necessary: intimidation, patriotism, the guilt of facing the suffering widower; he hadn't cared... and apparently, neither had Franks. 

He cared, now, though, as the child's solemn eyes reached his own with enough of a glimmer of anxious recognition that Gibbs was certain the child knew who he was. The child's complexion had paled by the time his gaze reached Gibbs's, and the boy's small teeth gnawed his pallid lower lip uncertainly.

Hoping to ease the child's anxiety, Gibbs slowly knelt and held out his hand, saying softly, “Son, I owe you my thanks... for what you did for my girls.”

The child stared at Gibbs hand uncertainly, even as his own hand tentatively lifted and reached to shake Gibbs'. There was barely a touch of hands before Tony pulled away, turned on his heels, and ran back down the hallway that the agent had just brought him from. 

Glancing back to Vance with concern, Gibbs was surprised when the man just shrugged and gestured to the table. 

“That's the most reaction we've seen from him since they doctors exam.” His wife explained. 

“Not exactly comforting.” 

“No, but perhaps it's progress. One of our primary concerns has been that he didn't seem to be reacting at all... completely disassociating himself from the event entirely. Let's sit down, eat, and give him time to come back. If he doesn't...” Vance trailed off because even as he spoke, his eyes swiveled down the hall to watch Tony returning with a small scratch pad that Jackie had bought the child after they'd noticed Tony surreptitiously pulling envelopes and adverts out of the trash to draw on their backs. 

Following the agent's gaze, Gibbs was amazed when the child carefully approached him and pushed the drawing pad into his hands, before backing away and taking the seat beside Mrs. Vance. 

Gibbs flipped through the first few pages until he came to an image that made him clench his eyes shut, drop the pad to the dining table, and close his palm over it, pressing the top page down, as if he could as easily suppress the pain that had been stirred up. 

“Gibbs?” Agent Vance's voice was colored with concern, and Gibbs could feel his gaze as well, but couldn't answer, yet. 

He took a deep breath, held it for a second, and looked back to Tony's solemn green gaze, almost as haunted as he knew his own to be, and nodded. 

“Thank you.” he repeated simply, before picking up the pad and rising. 

“Agent Vance, Mrs. Vance, Tony, thank you for the invitation, but I believe I should be going.”

Gibbs turned to leave, ignoring Mrs. Vance's concerned plea that he stay and froze when a firm hand wrapped around his elbow. Instead of stopping him, though, Vance pushed something into his hand, ordering, “My card. Call me when you've got yourself together.”


End file.
